The recent discussion of Baldurs Gate 3 tempted me to play a video game after a long break. What games do you suggest for someone who likes getting emotionally involved and likes intriguing twists?

I've played the Mass Effect series and the first Bioshock. Apologies if this is information that is easily found.

I remember being young and going over to one of our neighbor's house to watch him play Phantasy Star Online (PSO) on his Dreamcast with other people over the Internet which blew my mind as a kid. I also remember getting my parents to rent a copy of PSO for Gamecube to play it some, but since we had to return it, I didn't get very far or get to experience much of it. Though the memory of it being awesome never went away.

When I was in high school, one of my best friends at the time loved the Gamecube version and played it a ton with his dad and brother growing up. He found a private server to play the PC version, Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst, which includes both episodes 1 and 2 along with the PC only episode 4. ["Where is episode 3?" you might ask, that was released as a card game that was also set after the events of episodes 1, 2, and 4] and asked me if I wanted to play with him and his brother. We ended up playing together, usually once or twice a week, depending on our schedules. Sometimes we would play all evening and just chat while grinding and leveling up our characters. I think I ended up getting to level 50 out of a maximum of 200. I could easily have seen myself continuing to play for years as a way to keep up with that friend if we had stayed in touch.

That game has sat in the back of my head for years, I'd occasionally think about it, and have the urge to play it, but never would since I usually have other stuff going on, and I couldn't remember what server my character was on or my login information. I recently saw some videos about it on YouTube, since it was the 25th anniversary that has got me looking in to it again. I think later in the year I may look in to setting it up to play on my Android phone.

PSO has an interesting place in video game history, and something I didn't know until watching a retrospective was that the Monster Hunter series took inspiration from PSO.

There were follow-up games made, like Phantasy Star Universe, and Phantasy Star Online 2, but I only played PSO2 for a brief period when it was Japanese only, and I kept having my translation patches breaking every few days due to updates and never went back to revisit it after it was released in the West.

It made me curious if any Tilders played it back in the day or still play it now?
Do you have any fond memories of the game, or stories you might want to share?
Did you play or enjoy any of the follow-up games to the original PSO?

This is one of those posts that make me wish we could tag multiple tildes. Because this would apply to ~tv, ~movies, ~comics, ~games, ~books, and ~anime, with possibly even more.

A long time ago I read an article about weird crossovers, and it made the point that thanks to unrelated crossovers and six degrees of separation, the Archie comics Sonic technically existed in the same universe as... Some popular live action shows, because that show had a crossover with some other show that crossed over with Sonic. Obviously not really, but it was a funny thought.

I failed to find the article I remember, but my brief search did bring up the Tommy Westphall Shared Universe, which comprises 400+ shows thanks to various crossovers, cameos and in-universe references. There is a whole fandom wiki dedicated to it. There's also this site that lets you search for connections between TV shows. The site's description from DuckDuckGo is "Easily search and find the relationship between shows in the Tommy Westphall Universe and beyond." It's silly, but fun!

Thing is, most of my cursory searching into it has people focus on live-action TV and movies. And... Well, like I said at the start: the article I remember reading made a connection between Archie comics Sonic and some live-action show thanks to some crossover.

Since that first article, I've wondered off and on about the weirdest crossovers out there, and just how weird of a shared universe could exist. I don't want to limit it to one or two mediums, I want to find crossovers that can transcend mediums! Comics, TV, games and more!

So: what are the weirdest crossovers, cameos and in-universe connections you know of? What are the wildest connections we can make? And, for bonus fun, what are the ramifications of shoving all these wildly different series into one ridiculous universe?? how many different apocalypses can we shove into it

Looking to get a tablet for my birthday but I'm so disconnected I don't know what specs to look for, where to get one or a decent price range to expect. I do need something on the cheaper side, but am ok with something good if refurbished. Only ever had a tablet once and it was a "free*" one from Verizon over a decade ago. I'm also open to other device suggestions.

Wants:

1. Not an iPad
2. To be able to use it with an attachable keyboard as a light laptop replacement for the couch.
3. To be able to use it to play mobile games similarly while on the couch.
4. To set up in the kitchen when cooking with recipes or a video.
5. To work for playing/running D&D or Pathfinder (Foundry VTT is the biggest memory user.

I am wanting to be able to disconnect from my phone and all the work apps and social media and such while still playing farmrpg on a lazy night watching a panel show on TV.

Or watch something on the tablet while knitting or something.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like bragging.humble, social media and proselytism. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was able to keep up.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

For example, games like Superliminal (solving puzzles), The Stanley Parable (exploration) and the upcoming Subliminal.

The backroom games I've looked at tend to be just about walking and walking and it gets really boring. I played the game called "Pools" and though I liked the aesthetic, I just got so bored because there wasn't anything to do at all other than just looking around and walking. any suggestions?

Finally embarking on a side-project that I will be doing with Django.

One thing that I am having to consider is how to do encryption.

Looking at the explanations of different levels of encryption here, I think data at rest is really all I need to do (although, I will probably use cloudflare tunnels which will also ensure data in transit but I just won't be implementing it myself is all).

Now, doing data at rest, doing some research, django-cryptography comes up a lot but that hasn't been updated in forever, to point where an open issue on its repo points to a new library (django-cryptograph-5) that was made specifically cause the devs of django-cryptography seem to have abandoned it, but that same thing could happen to the new off-shoot.

I can't tell if this means that I am looking on the wrong webpages for knowledge of how to do about this or when working in the python open-source ecosystem, there's no list of trustworthy reliable publishers of a library for data at rest encryption? like how Django REST Framework is so established, they even have sponsors now.

Food highlights for the year?
Favorite meals?
New baking breakthroughs?
Hilarious cooking disasters?
New restaurants in your area?
Delicious snacking?

Let us know how all about your food for 2025 and what eating/cooking/baking/snacking was like for you.

As we finish out 2025, it's been a minute since we had a question like this and with apologies to @kfwyre for stealing their MO.

What's something you're proud of? Maybe from this year, maybe not, but especially something you don't get to talk about a lot, for whatever reason.

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?